Category Archives: dread

Now

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in abundance, adventure, becoming, courage, devotion, discomfort, dread, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, learning, movement, mystery, nature, pain, poems, poetry, release, stillness, strength, transition, welcoming, work

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He slams the door behind him.

You think, Good riddance!

When next your heart stops and breath catches,

out comes a gasp, What have I done?

Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes

from complete sense to non-sense,

and it is on that iceberg of moment

(and each drifting ice island following)

when wondering, Is this true?

might most gather you back together in a form

strong enough,

wise enough

to hold all the sensations and feelings

threatening to tear you to pieces

to be with Now,

an actual fullness of Life

for which you have the grandest capacity.

A fire, a wave, a mountain

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in becoming, break out, change, courage, discomfort, dread, fear, Fire, home, learning, movement, poems, poetry, work

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The basements, bathrooms, shrouded corners,

narrow, black to seem endless, alleys,

the Do-Not-Enters,

these are the intended places.

Go to them.

What courage lies docile and low

will rise up, a fire, a wave, a mountain

to have your back even as growing fear

dissolves

what you think holds you together.

Knocking

02 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in adventure, courage, dread, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, listen, poems, poetry, receiving, release, welcoming

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And when Fear comes knocking?

Or, more likely, bamblarkblasting its way in,

do you invite him to sit down,

notice her nebulous sucking barbed wire darkness,

and surrender yourself to the visit knowing

something important will be learned?

Come, come Fear, welcome,

enter and offer what brings you through town-

you might say

in honor and awe of,

out of respect for the guest with power

to leave you shivering, quivering

and yet more able to walk on

with starlight in your eyes-

have yourself a cup of tea,

You must be tired.

Winged shadow

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in beauty, break out, change, Deliverance, dread, fearlessness, Fire, freedom, listen, movement, mystery, poems, poetry, wonder

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Were I to cull a story,

cut off its wings to still its tongue,

would you be any safer from the past?

The chills walking your spine are not

exiting belief but

sashes and

passages of truth.

Words have no allegiance

once the fire is struck,

and winged shadow escapes, up,

out, beyond-

toward a second

a third

an eleventh

pulsing heart

with ears to hear.

Practice your listening-

what you fear most may be 

the balm of the deep.

Ask them to tea

19 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in abundance, becoming, change, courage, dark, devotion, discomfort, dread, freedom, gratitude, honoring, learning, listen, movement, pain, poems, poetry, release, strength, wonder

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Shame is a dark and sticky thing.

A hole we never see.

A bottomless, unnameable void.

It snatches us in the unlit alleys of our minds.

Ghastly,

what it thinks it can make us do-

shrink ourselves to the smallest brittleness

of an undesirable,

worthless,

lifeless

outcast

who cannot get anything right.

Immense power we give to one with no hands,

no face,

not even a nose.

And, how lucky we are

to have the nerve

to turn and look,

to sniff,

to get to know

the lurking bogeymen, the paralyzing Medusas,

behind the fence

and around the bend.

Come, come-

Let us ask them to tea

to learn what it is

they really want.

Visitor

12 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in becoming, courage, dread, freedom, learning, listen, poems, poetry, presence, transition

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He always shows up uninvited.
And closed doors don’t slow him in the least.
(It’s like that when you haven’t a face,
a body
or a name.)
His approach sinks your belly like a battleship,
and ushers in a near silent gasp-
“Oh no.”
To which,
were anyone else to hear and wonder,
you’d deny ever uttering.
So you reach for a bottle,
and the volume button,
also the telephone, the tv and a book-
none of which can you pay any attention to,
breath having suspended upon his arrival
in singular focus:
that of prey.
And how, possibly, to get away…

Consider the difference
were you to put down the glass,
smile at the kids still out playing frisbee in the yard,
take a seat, look at him
and say,
“Hello, old friend. What have you come to tell me?”

an ancient imagined sorrow

29 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in abundance, beauty, dread, fearlessness, freedom, gratitude, learning, poems, poetry, release, wonder

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The loosening grip of an ancient imagined sorrow
frees up
the rolling giggles of a belly forgetting to stand sentry
against a world prepared to rip everything apart.
Annihilation lays waste to whatever weakens,
and the rebuild, oh the rebuild,
brings unshakable bones, windows welcoming sky,
framing blue and star and cloud,
stained glass casting colored light in beams
where acoustics music cries to court
carry every soulful voice
to heavens protective of all that’s sacred and immortal.

“Into the mystic…”

31 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in dread, freedom, poems, poetry, Uncategorized

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What is it to be alone?
To create music with words?
To dance without movement?
To see with eyes closed?
Then comes the dread again,
the belly-sickening rawness,
far beyond the tears that fall
in morning tea,
the core untethering from the illusions
of embodiment.
Gripping.
And I know well,
while it brings me to my knees,
It’s nothing,
clearing the way
to everything…
Boundlessness